While they are travelling on their way, we, you and I, dear reader, will not only get on before them, but also turn back the pages of life's story, and read its secrets.
They were going to a great house in a fine park, where fern waved its tall, mounted feathers of green, and hid the dappled deer from sight-- where great ancestral oaks spread protecting branches; where hawthorn trees, that it had taken three generations of men to make, stood, large, thick, knotted, twisted--strange, dark, stunted looking trees they looked, till spring came, and no green was like their green, and the glory of their flower-wreaths people made pilgrimages to see. The place was called Beremouth.
A mile and a half off was a town; one of those odd little old places which tell of days and fashions past away. A very respectable place.
There had lived in Marston the dowager ladies of old country families, in houses which had no pretensions to grandeur as you passed them in the extremely quiet street, but which on the other side broke out into bay windows, garden fronts, charming conservatories, and a {19} good many other things which help to make life pleasant. So the inhabitants of Marston were not all mere country-town's people. They knew themselves to be _somebodies_ and they never forgot it.
Now, in this town dwelt a certain widow lady; poor she was, but she had a pedigree and two beautiful daughters. Mary and Lucia Morier were not two commonly, or even uncommonly, pretty girls; they were wonderfully beautiful, people said, and nothing less. So lovers came a courting. One married a Scotchman, a Mr. Erskine. They liked each other quite well enough, Lucia thought, when she made her promises, and received his; and so they did. They lived happily; did good; wished for children but never had any, and so adopted Mr. Erskine's orphan nephew--namely, the very man who behaved with such strange imprudence in the inn at Hull. Mr. Erskine the uncle was twenty years older than Mrs. Erskine the aunt. Mr. Erskine the younger was but a child when they adopted him. But he was their heir, as well as the inheritor of his father's' fortune, and they loved and cared for him.
Mary Morier did differently. She married at twenty, her younger sister having married the month before at eighteen. Mary did differently, for she did imprudently. They had had a brother who was an agent for certain mines thirty miles off; and there he lived; but he came home often enough, and made the house in the old town gay. A year before the sister married, in fact while that sister was away on a visit to friends in Scotland, the brother came home ill. He was ill for six months. It is wonderful how much expense is incurred by a mother in six months for a son who is sick. It made life very difficult. The money to pay for Lucia's journey home had to be thought of. To be sure, she was not there to eat and drink, but then her extra finery had cost something. George had only earned one hundred a year. It had not been more than enough to keep him. He came home ill with ten pounds in his pocket, beside his half-year's rent, which would be due the next month--certainly money at this time was wanted, for our friends were sadly pinched. But the one most exemplary friend and servant Jenifer was paid her wages, and tea and sugar money to the day; and the doctor got so many guineas that he grew desperate and suddenly refused to come--then repented, and made a Christian-like bargain, that he would go on coming on condition that he never saw another piece of any kind of money.
Mary and her mother looked each other in the face one day, and that look told all. There was some plate, and they had watches, and a little fine old-fashioned jewelry--yes, they must go. They were reduced to poverty at last--this was more than "limited means"--hard penury had them with a desperate grasp.
Fortune comes in many shapes, and not often openly, and with a flourish of trumpets--neither did she come in that way now; but shamefacedly, sneakingly, and ringing the door-bell with a meek, not to say tremulous pull; and her shape was that of a broad-built, short, wide-jawed, lanky-haired, pig-eyed, elderly man, with a curious quantity of waistcoat showing, yet, generally, well dressed. "Your mistress at home?" "Yes, Mr. Brewer." "Mr. George better?" "No. Never will be, sir." "Bless me! I beg your pardon!" "Granted before 'tis asked, sir." "Ah! yes; I have a little business to transact with your mistress. Can I see her alone?" Mr. Brewer was shown by Jenifer into the little right-hand parlor. He gravely took out a huge pocket-book, and then a small parchment-covered account-book appeared. I believe he had persuaded himself that he was really going to transact business, and not to perform the neatest piece of deception that a {20} respectable gentleman ever attempted. A lady entered the room. "Madam, jour son has been my agent for mines three years--my mine _and land_ agent since Christmas. He takes the additional work at seventy-five pounds a year extra. The half of that is now due to him. I pay _that_ myself. I have brought it" And thirty-seven pounds ten shillings Mr.
Brewer put on the table, saying, "I will take your receipt, madam.
Don't trouble Georges's head about business; for when you _do_ speak of that you will have, I am sorry to say, to inform him that in _both_ his places I have had to put another man. I have to give George three months' payment at the rate of one hundred and seventy pounds a year, as I gave him no quarter's warning. That is business, do you understand?" asked Mr. Brewer. "It is for my son to discharge himself, sir--since he cannot"--the mother's voice faltered. "Ah--only he didn't, and I did," said Mr. Brewer. "Your receipt? When your son recovers, let him apply to me. I am sorry to end our connexion so abruptly. But it is business. Business, you know"--and there Mr.
Brewer stopped, for Mary Morier was in the room, and her beauty filled it, or seemed to do so. And Mr. Brewer departed muttering, as he had muttered before often, "the most beautiful girl in the world." Still, he had an uncomfortable sensation, for he felt he was an underhand sneak, and that Mary had found him out; and so she had. She knew that her brother had been "discharged" only to afford a pretext for giving the quarter's money; and she was sure that his being land agent, at an additional seventy-five pounds a year, was a pure unadulterated fiction.
Mr. Brewer was an extraordinary man. He had a turn for the supernatural. He would have liked above all things to have worked miracles. He did do odd things, such as we have seen, which he made, by means of the poetic quality that characterized him, a purely natural act. He was praising George for a saving, prudent, industrious young man, who had never drawn the whole of his last year's salary, before an hour was over. And his story looked so like truth that he believed it himself.
Mr. Brewer was what people call "a risen man." But then his father had been rising--and, for the matter of that, his grandfather too. All their fortunes had flowed into the life of the man who has got into this story; and he, having had a tide of prosperity exceeding all others, in height, and strength, and riches, had found himself stranded on the great shore of society, at forty years of age, with more thousands a year than he liked to be generally known. Could he have transformed himself into a benignant fairy he would have been very happy, and acts of mercy would have abounded on the earth. But no--Mr. Brewer was Mr. Brewer, and anything less poetic to look at--more impossible as to wands, and wings, and good fairy appendages, it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Brewer was a middle-aged man, with hands in his pockets; plain truth is always respectable. There it is.
But there was a Mrs. Brewer. Now Mrs. Brewer was an excellent woman, but not excellent after the manner of her husband. She was three years older. They had not been in love. They had married at an epoch in Mr.
Brewer's life when public affairs occupied his time so entirely as to make it desirable to have what people call a "missus;" we are afraid that Mr. Brewer himself so called the article, a "missus, at home."
Mrs. Brewer had been "a widow lady--young--of a sociable and domestic disposition" who "desired to be housekeeper--to be treated confidentially, and as one of the family--to a widower--with or without children." On inquiry, it was found that young Mrs. Smith had not irrevocably determined that the owner of the house that she was to keep should have been the husband of one wife, undoubtedly {21} dead; the widower was an expression only, a sort of modest way of putting the plain fact of a single man, or a man capable of matrimony--the expression meant all that; and when Mrs. Smith entered on the housekeeping, she acted up to the meaning of the advertisement, and married Mr. Brewer. Neither had ever repented. Let that be understood.
Only, Mr. Brewer, when he knew he could live in a great house, dine off silver, keep a four-in-hand, or a pack of hounds, or enter on any other legitimate mode of spending money, did none of them; but eased his mind and his pocket by such contrivances as we have seen resorted to in the presence of the beautiful Mary Morier. He tried curious experiments of what a man would do with ten pounds. He had dangerous notions as to people addicted to certain villanies being cured of their moral diseases by the administration of a hundred a year. In some round-about ways he had put the idea to the proof, and not always with satisfactory results. He held as an article of faith--nobody could guess where he found it--that there were people in the world who could go straighter in prosperity than in adversity. He never would believe that adversity was a thing to be suffered. He had replied to a Protestant divine on that subject, illustrated in the case of a starving family, that that might be, only it was no concern of his, and he would not act upon the theory. And the result was a thriving, thankful family in Australia, to whom Mr. Brewer was always, ever after, sending valuable commodities, and receiving flower-seeds and skins of gaudy feathered birds in return.
Mr. Brewer had a daughter, Claudia was her name. "A Bible name," said Mr. Brewer, and bowed his head, and felt he had done his duty by the girl. What more could he do? She went to school, and was at school when he was paying money in Mrs. Morier's parlor. She was then ten years old; and being a clever child, she had, in the holidays just over, chosen to talk French, and nothing else, to a friend whom she had been allowed to bring with her. A thing that had caused great perturbation in the soul of her honest father, who prayed in a wordless, but real anxiety, that the Bible name might not be thrown away on the glib-tongued little gipsy. It will be perceived that Claudia was a difficulty.
Now, when Mr. Brewer was gone out of Mrs. Morier's house, the mother took up the money, wiped her eyes, and said, "What a good boy George was." And Mary said "_Yes;_" and knew in her heart that if there had been any chance of George living, Mr. Brewer would never have done _that_.
George died. There was money, just enough for all wants. Lucia came home engaged to the married to Mr. Erskine. And when she was gone there went with her a certain seven hundred pounds, her fortune, settled--what a silly mockery Mr. Erskine thought it--on her children.
The loss made the two who were left very poor. Lucia sent her mother gifts, but the regular and to be reckoned on eight-and-twenty pounds a year were gone. She who had eaten, drank, and dressed was gone too--but still it was a loss; and Mary and her mother were poor. Also, Mary had long been engaged to be married to the son of a younger branch of a great county family house, Lansdowne Lorimer by name. He was in an attorney's office in Marston. In that old-world place, the attorney, himself of a county family, was a great man. It was hard to see Lucia marry a man of money and land, young Lorimer thought, so he advised Mary to assert their independence of all earthly considerations, and marry too. And they did so.
The young man had no father or mother. He had angry uncles and insolent aunts, and family friends, all to be respected, and prophets of evil, every one of them. He had, also, a place in the office, a clear head, a determined will, a handsome {22} person, a good pedigree, and a beautiful wife. She, also, had her eight-and-twenty pounds a year. But they gave it back regularly to Mrs. Morier; for, you know, they, the young people, _were_ young, and they could work.
Mrs. Morier never spent this money. She and Jenifer, the prime minister of that court of loyal love, put it by, against the evil day, and they had just enough for themselves and the cat to live upon without it.
The county families asked their imprudent kinsman to visit them with his bride. How they flouted her. How they advised her. How they congratulated her that she had always been poor. How they assured her that she would be poor for ever. How, too, they feared that Lansdowne would never bear hard work, nor anxiety, nor any other of those troubles which were so very sure to happen. How surprised they were at the three pretty silk dresses, the one plain white muslin, and the smart best white net. How they scorned when they heard that she and Jenifer, and her mother, and a girl at eightpence a day, had made them all. And, then, how they sunned themselves in her wonderful beauty, and accepted the world's praises of it, and kept the triumph themselves, and handed over to her the gravest warnings of its being a dangerous gift.
Dangerous, indeed! it was the pride of Lorimer's life. And Mary was accomplished, far more really accomplished than the lazy, half-taught creatures who had never said to themselves that they might have to play and sing, and speak French and Italian, for their or their children's bread. Mary had said it to herself many a time since her heart had been given to the man who was her husband. A true, brave, loving heart it was, and that which her common sense had whispered to it that heart was strong to do, and would be found doing if the day of necessity ever came. So, at that Castle Dangerous where the bride and bridegroom were staying, Mary outshone others, and was not the better loved for that; and one old Lady Caroline crowned the triumph by ordering a piano-forte for the new home at Marston, with a savage "Keep up what you know, child; you may be glad of it one day." Old Lady Caroline was generally considered as a high-bred privileged savage. But that was the only savage thing she ever said to Mary. She told Lorimer that he was a selfish, unprincipled brute for marrying anybody so perfect and so pretty. And Lorimer bore her misrepresentations with remarkable patience, only making her a ceremonious bow, and saying in a low voice, "You know better." "I know you will starve," and she walked off without an answer.
They did not starve. In fact, they prospered, till one sad day when Lorimer caught cold--and again and again caught cold--cough, pain, symptoms of consumption--a short, sad story; and then the great end, death. Mary was a widow three years after her wedding day, with a child of two years of age at her side, and an income from a life insurance made by her husband of one hundred a year. We have seen the child--grown to a beautiful girl of seventeen--we have seen her in the room with Mr. Erskine, at the inn at Hull.
Mrs. Lorimer went back to live with her mother, Jenifer, and the great white cat.
The year after this great change, Mrs. Brewer died, and Claudia at thirteen was a greater difficulty than ever. The first holidays after the departure of the good mother, the puzzled father had written to the two Miss Gainsboroughs to bring the child to Marston and stay at his house during the holidays. He entertained them for a week, and then went off on a tour through Holland. The next holidays he proposed that they should take a house at Brighton, and that he should pay all expenses. This, too, was done, and Mr. Brewer went to a hotel and there made friends with his precocious daughter in a way that surprised and pleased {23} him. He visited the young lady, and she entertained him. He hired horses, and they rode together. He took boxes at the theatre, and they made parties and went together. He gave the girl jewelry and fine clothes, and they really got to know each other, and to enjoy life together as could never have been the case had they not been thus left to their own way. The child no longer felt herself of a different world from that of her parents--the father had a companion in the child who could grace his position, and keep her own. They parted with love and anxious lookings forward to the summer meeting. They were both in possession of a new happiness. When Mr.
Brewer got back to Marston, he led a dull, dreamy life--a year and a half of widowhood passed--then he went to Mrs. Morier's, saw Mary, and asked her to be his wife. It is not easy to declare why Mary Lorimer said--after some weeks of wondering-mindedness--why she said "Yes."
She knew all Mr. Brewer's goodness. She preferred, no doubt, not to wound a heart that had so often sympathized with the wounded. She never, in her life, could have borne to see him vexed without great vexation herself. She liked that he should be rewarded. She was interested in Claudia. She liked the thought of two hundred a year settled on her mother. She liked to feel that her own little Mary might be brought up as grandly as any of those little saucy "county family" damsels, her cousins, who already looked down on her, and scorned her pink spotted calico frock.
Mary and Mr. Brewer walked quietly to church; Mrs. Morier still in astonishment, and Jenifer "dazed;" bat all the working people loved Mr. Brewer. And they walked back, man and wife, to her mother's house, and had a quiet substantial breakfast before they started for London.
And when there Mr. Brewer told her that they were not to return to the respectable stone-fronted house facing the market-place in Marston, but that he had bought Lord Byland's property--and that Beremouth was theirs. Beremouth, with its spreading park, and river, and lake, its miles of old pasture-land, its waving ferns, and dappled deer; Beremouth, with its forest and gardens, royal oaks and twisted hawthorn trees; Beremouth, the finest place in the county. And all that Mary felt was, that he who had kept this secret, had had a true hero's delicacy, and had never thought to bribe her, or to get her by purchase into his home. I think she almost loved him then.
In due time, after perhaps six months of wandering, and of preparation, Mr. and Mrs. Brewer arrived at their new home, made glorious by all that taste and art could do, with London energy working with the power of gold. With them came Claudia. The child loved her new mother with an abandonment of heart and a perfect approval. She was still too young to argue, but she was not too young to feel. The mother she had now got, though not much more than ten years older than herself, was the mother to love, admire, delight in--is the mother who could understand her.
Then Beremouth just suited this young lady's idea of what was worth having in this world; and without any evil thought of the homely mother who had gone, there was a thought that "Mother-Mary," as Mrs.
Brewer was called by her step-daughter, looked right at Beremouth, and that another class of person would have looked wrong there--so wrong that her father under such circumstances would never have put himself in the position of trying the experiment.
Minnie Lorimer was very happy in her great play-ground; for all the world, and all life, was play to little Minnie. She loved her new sister; and the new sister patronized and petted her, so all seemed right. It was, indeed, a great happiness for Claudia that her father had chosen Mary Lorimer. Claudia was a vixenish, little handsome gipsy; very clever, very {24} high-spirited, full of life, health, and fun--a girl who could have yielded to very few, and who brought the homage of heart and mind to "Mother-Mary," and rejoiced in doing it.
These two grew to be great friends, and when after three years Claudia came home and came out, all parties were happy.
In the meantime Mr. Brewer's way in the world had been straight, plain, and rapidly travelled. The county was at his feet. Mary was no longer congratulated on having been brought up to poverty. Behind her back there were plenty of people to say that Mr. Brewer was happy in having for his wife a well connected gentlewoman. Her pedigree was told, her poverty forgotten. Her singing and playing, dancing and drawing, were none the worse for unknown thousands a year. And people wondered less openly at the splendor of velvets and diamonds than they had at the new muslin gown. To Mary herself life was very different in every way. Daily, more and more, she admired her husband, and approved of him. It was the awakening into life of a new set of feelings. She knew none of the love and devotion she had felt for her first husband.
Mr. Brewer never expected any of it. But he intended that she should, in some other indescribable manner, fall in love with him, and she was doing it every day--which thing her husband saw, and welcomed life with great satisfaction in consequence.
It was when Claudia came out that the man we have seen, Horace Erskine, first came to them. He was just of age. Mary did not like him. She could give no reason for it. Her sister had always praised him--but Mary _could_ not like him. He came to them for a series of gay doings, and Mr. Brewer admired him, and Claudia--poor little Claudia! She gave him that strong heart of hers; that spirit that could break sooner than bend was quite enslaved--she loved him, and he had asked for her love, and vowed a hundred times that he could never be happy without it. He asked her of her father, and Mr. Brewer consented. It was not for Mary to say no; but her heart went cold in its fear, and she was very sorry.
The Erskines in Scotland were delighted--all deemed doing well. But when Horace Erskine talked to Mr. Brewer about money, he was told that Claudia would have on her marriage five thousand pounds; and ten thousand more if she survived him would be forthcoming on his death-- that was all. "Enough for a woman," said Mr. Brewer; and Erskine was silent. It went on for a few weeks, Horace, being flighty and odd, Claudia, for the first time in her life, humble and endearing. Then he told her that to him money was necessary; then he asked her to appeal to her father for more; then she treated the request lightly, and, at last, positively refused. If she had not enough, he could leave her.
If he left her, would she take the blame on herself? It would injure him in his future hopes and prospects to have it supposed to be _his_ doing if they parted? Yes, she said. It was the easiest thing in the world. Who cared?--not he of course--and, certainly, not Claudia Brewer. It broke her heart to find him vile. But she was too discerning not to see the truth; her great thought now was to hide it.
To hide too from every one, even from "Mother-Mary," that her heart felt death-struck--that the whole place was poisoned to her--that life at Beremouth was loathsome.
She took a strange way of hiding it.
A county election was going on. The man whom Mr. Brewer hoped to see elected was a guest at Beremouth. An old, grey-haired, worldly, statesmanlike man. A man who petted Claudia, and admired her; and who suddenly woke up one day to a thought--a question--a species of amusing suggestion, which grew into a {25} profound wonder, and then even warmed into a hope--surely that pretty bright young heiress liked him, had a fancy to be the second Lady Greystock. It was a droll thought at first, and he played with it; a flattering fancy, and he encouraged it. He was an honest man. He knew that he was great, clever, learned. Was there anything so wonderful in a woman loving him? He settled the question by asking Claudia. And she promised to be his wife with a real and undisguised gladness. Her spirit and her determination were treading the life out of her heart. She was sincere in her gladness. She thought she could welcome any duties that took her away from life at Beremouth, and gave her place and position elsewhere.
Mary suspected much, and feared everything. But Claudia felt and knew too much to speak one word of the world of hope and joy and love that had gone away from her. She declared that she liked her old love, and gloried in his grey hairs, and in the great heart that had stooped to ask for hers.
Now what are we to say of Horace Erskine? Was he wholly bad? First, he had never loved Claudia with a real devotion. He had admired her; she had loved him. He had gambled--green turf and green cloth--gambled and recklessly indulged himself till he had got upon the way to ruin, and had begun the downward path, and was glad to be stopped in that slippery descent by a marriage with an heiress. There was a sparkle, an originality, about Claudia. It was impossible not to be taken with her. But Claudia with only _that_ fortune was of no use to him. He knew she was brave and true-hearted; so he boldly asked her to guard his name--in fact, to give him up, and not injure his next chance with a better heiress by telling the truth. _He_ told _her_ the truth; that he wanted money, and money he must have. She would not tell him that the worst part of her trial was the loss of her idol. It was despising him that broke her heart. But because he had been her idol she would never injure him--never tell.
So the day came, and at Marston church she married Sir Geoffrey Greystock, "Mother-Mary" wondering; Mr. Brewer believing, in the innocence of his heart, that the fancy for Horace Erskine had been a bit of the old wilfulness. "The last bit--the last," he said, as he spoke of it to her that very day, making her chilled heart knock against her side as he spoke, and kissed her, and sent her with blessings from the Beremouth that she had married to get away from.
_To get away_--it had more to do with her marrying than any other thought. To get away from the house, the spreading pastures, the bright garden, and above all from the _old deer pond_ in the park--the most beautiful of all the many lovely spots that nature and art, and time and taste, had joined to create and adorn Beremouth. The old deer pond in the park! Sheltered by ancient oak; backed by interlacing boughs of old hawthorn trees; shadowed by tall, shining, dark dense holly, that glowed through the winter with its red berries, and contrasted with the long fair wreaths of hawthorn flowers in the sweet smiling spring. There, in this now dreaded place, Horace Erskine had first spoken of love; and there how often had he promised her the happiness that had gone out of her life--for ever. In the terrible nights, when her broken-hearted pains were strongest, this deer pond in the park had been before her closed eyes like a vision. In its waters she saw in her sleep her face and his, so happy, so loving, so trusting, so true. Then the picture in that water changed, and she watched it in her feverish dreams with horror, but yet was obliged to gaze, and the truth went out of his face, and the terror came into hers. And, worse and worse, he grew threatening--he was cold--he had never loved--he was killing her; and she fell, fell from her height of happiness; no protecting {26} arm stayed her, and the dark waters opened, and she heard the rushing sound of their deadly waves closing over her, as she sunk--sunk--again and again, night after night Oh, to get away, to get away! And she blessed Sir Geoffrey, and when he said he was too old to wait for a wife she was glad, for she had no wish to wait. Change, absence, another home, another life, another world--these things she wanted, and they had come. Is it any wonder that she took them as the man who is dying of thirst takes the longed-for draught, and drains the cup of mercy to the dregs?
It was a happy day to marry. Mr. Brewer had not only an excuse, but a positively undeniable reason for being bountiful and kind. For once he could openly, and as a matter of duty, make the sad hearts in Marston--and elsewhere--sing for joy. His blessings flowed so liberally that he had to apologize. It was only for once--he begged everybody's pardon, but it could never happen again; he had but this one child, and she was a bride, and so if they would forgive everything this once! And many a new life of gladness was begun that day; many a burden then lost its weight; many a record went up to the Eternal memory to meet that man at the inevitable hour.
Little Mary was the loveliest bridesmaid the world ever saw; standing alone like an angel by her dark sister's side. She was the only thing that Claudia grieved to leave. She was glad to flee away from "Mother-Mary." She dreaded lest those sweet wistful eyes should read her heart one day; and she could not help rejoicing to get away from that honest, open-hearted father's sight. Her poor, wrecked, shrunken heart--her withered life, could not bear the contrast with his free, kind, bounteous spirit that gave such measure of love, pressed down and running over, to all who wanted it. Her old husband, Sir Geoffrey, resembled that great good heart in whose love she had learnt to think all men true, more than did her young lover Horace Erskine--she could be humble and thankful to Sir Geoffrey; a well-placed approval was a better thing than an ill-placed love. So with that little vision of beauty, Minnie Lorimer, by her side, Claudia became Sir Geoffrey's wife.
Four months past, the bride and bridegroom were entertaining a grand party at their fine ancestral home, and Mr. Brewer was the father of a son and heir. Horace Erskine read both announcements in the paper one morning, and ground his teeth with vexation. He went to his desk and took out three letters, a long lock of silky hair, a small miniature--these things he had begged to keep. Laughing, he had argued that he was almost a relation. His uncle had married "Mother-Mary's"
sister. She had had no strength to debate with him. She had chosen to wear the mask of indifference, too, to him. He now made these things into a parcel and sent them to Sir Geoffrey Greystock without one word of explanation. When they were gone he wrote to his uncle, begged for some money, got it, and started for Vienna. The money met him in London, and he crossed to France the same day.
In the midst of great happiness the strong heart of good Sir Geoffrey stood still. His wife sought him. She found him in his chair in a fit.
On a little table by his side was the parcel just received. Claudia knew all. She took the parcel into the room close by, called her dressing room, rung for help, but in an hour Sir Geoffrey was dead; and Claudia had burnt the letters and the lock of silky hair.
The business of parliament, the excitement attendant on his marriage with that beautiful girl, the entertainment of that great house full of company--these reasons the world reckoned up, and found sufficient to answer the questions and the wonderings on Sir Geoffrey's death.
But when those solemn walls no longer knew their master, Claudia, into whose new life the new things held but an {27} unsteady place, grew ill. First of all, sleepless nights: how could she sleep with the sound of those waters by the deer pond in her ears? How could she help gazing perpetually at the picture on the pond's still surface: Horace and Sir Geoffrey, and herself not able to turn aside the death-stroke, but standing, fettered by she knew not what, in powerless misery, only obliged to see the changing face of her husband till the dead seemed to be again before her, and Horace melted out of sight, and she woke, dreading fever and praying against delirium? She was overcome at last.
Terrible hours came, and "Mother-Mary's" sweet face mingling with some strong, subduing, life-endangering dream, was the first thing that seemed to bring her back to better things, and to restore her to herself.
In fact, Claudia had had brain fever, and whether or not she was ever to know real health again was a problem to be worked out by time.
Would she come back to her father's house? No! The very name of Beremouth was to be avoided. Would she go abroad? Oh, no; there was a dread of separation upon her. "Somewhere where you can easily hear of me, and I of you; where you can come and see me, for I shall never see Beremouth again." It was her own thought, and so, about five miles from Beremouth, in the house of a Doctor Rankin, who took ladies out of health into his family, Claudia determined to go. It was every way the best thing that could be done, for every day showed more strongly than the last that Claudia would never be what is emphatically called "herself" again. So people said.
Dr. Rankin was kind, learned, and wise; Mrs. Rankin warm-hearted and friendly. Other patients beside Lady Greystock were there. It was not a private asylum, and Claudia was not mad; it was really what it called itself, a home which the sick might share, with medical attendance, cheerful company, and out-door recreations in a well-kept garden and extensive grounds of considerable beauty. Claudia had known Dr. and Mrs. Rankin, and had called with her father at Blagden, where they lived. And there her father and "Mother-Mary" took her three months after her husband's death, looking really aged, feeble, and strangely sad.